60 Seconds
by Trindajae
Summary: Kate slips on ice.  Set nebulously after 4x19 "47 Seconds". AU after 4x20 airs unless the writers have seen my Christmas List. Oblique spoilers for end of season 3 and 4x19.
1. The Fall

A/N: There are no new chapters to this, I'm just re-uploading it in sections to fix FFnet's formatting errors and to make it more easy to follow.

* * *

><p>"Well, that went better than I'd hoped."<p>

Kate Beckett stepped out onto the sidewalk, shading her eyes from the glare of the sun off the snowy sidewalk. Castle stopped beside her while he fished his gloves out of his pocket.

"Some people handle loss pretty well, Castle. At least now they have some closure and their daughter's killer is behind bars."

They walked in silence down the block towards the car, each lost in thoughts about the case they'd just closed. It hadn't been particularly difficult or odd, just a domestic argument turned deadly. Sometimes the common cases bothered Castle the most, though. There were so many of them and they were all so senseless.

He turned to ask Kate about it and watched in horror as her foot hit a patch of ice, and the back of her head hit the sidewalk.

"Kate!"

His hands shook as he slid to the ground next to her, the words "unconscious and not breathing" running through his head like a hysterical hamster on a wheel. One hand on her forehead, the other gently lifting her chin, and the hamster wheel was interrupted by a bolt of gratitude to first aid instructors when she took a breath on her own.

Her eyes fluttered as she groaned and tried to roll onto her side. Castle stopped her with a hand on her shoulder while he fumbled his phone out of his coat pocket.

"Don't move, Kate. I'm calling an ambulance, but you need to hold still."

"What happened?"

"You fell and hit your head. You are not getting up until you've been checked out." He gave their location to 911 and didn't take his eyes off Kate as he answered the dispatcher's questions. She closed her eyes with a grimace of pain. "She blacked out for maybe a minute - Hey, Kate! Eyes open, no sleeping! - No, she's awake now and breathing okay."


	2. Confusion

Kate opened her eyes to a world of pain, cold and confusion. There was a man leaning over her with a worried expression and her head hurt enough to make it hard to think straight. She groaned and tried to sit up but her stomach almost rebelled and she realized she was too dizzy to fight the man's hand against her shoulder. She let her eyes slide shut while he talked on the phone, trying to piece together fragments of what happened. He said she fell and hit her head, and she could certainly feel the truth of that. But the rest of the memory skittered away from her when she reached for it. As she heard the siren of the approaching ambulance, some of her confusion coalesced into a question.

"Where's Royce?"

"What?" The man leaned over her as soon as she spoke, his face a pale blur to her tired eyes.

"My partner. Royce. Where is he?"

"Kate, Royce isn't your partner anymore. He hasn't been your partner since before you made detective."

The words rattled around inside her skull, refusing to hold still so that she could understand them.

"Who are you?"

He looked like she'd just slapped him and she almost wished she could take back the question.

"I'm your partner. Richard Castle."

That was as much nonsense as Royce not being her partner anymore, but Kate could tell he was being serious.

"Richard Castle? The mystery writer?"

The ambulance pulled up and suddenly there was a paramedic shining a light in her eyes. She could just barely see without turning her head that the other paramedic was laying a backboard on the ground next to her. The world swam out of focus again.

"I'll call Ryan and Esposito." The man with the phone was talking to her again. He sounded like he was holding onto his calm with his last bit of willpower. Now Kate really regretted asking who he was. The answer didn't leave her any less confused and it was clear she'd hurt him by asking it. "I'll have them meet us at the hospital. I should probably drive your car over there. Or maybe we should come back for it later. It's fine where it is. Isn't it?"

Kate took pity on his confusion since it seemed so similar to her own. She felt the need to hold on to the one ally she had with her, at least until someone she knew showed up.

"Stay with me?" Her voice was small and slightly muffled by the collar the medics had snapped on her. The man looked like he would've reached for her hand except the paramedics were lifting her up and setting the backboard on a gurney. One of them nodded when the man asked if he could come and Kate let the world go fuzzy again as the ambulance started for the hospital.


	3. Ambulance

"Esposito and Ryan said they'd meet us at the hospital." Castle knew he was babbling, but the paramedic had told him to help keep Kate awake. Castle was half sure the instruction was meant to keep Castle calm and out from under foot, but he was grateful for the task anyway. Kate couldn't look at him while she was strapped down, but Castle could see the crinkle of confusion around her eyes.

"Who?"

The paramedic looked up from the IV he was hooking up to meet Castle's worried expression.

"Memory loss isn't unheard of with head trauma and it's probably temporary. Don't panic about it until she's had some time to start recovering. Her vitals are good, she's young and in pretty good shape. These are all good things."

Castle nodded, swallowed hard, and reached over to hold the hand that Beckett was holding out to him. Her hand felt cooler than it should, though Castle didn't know if that was just from laying on the ice before the ambulance arrived. He had the sneaking suspicion that the paramedic was downplaying how serious this was in an attempt to keep Castle from freaking out in the back of the ambulance.

Kate closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her eyes flew open. "Lanie! I was supposed to meet Lanie for lunch today. We always have lunch together on Tuesdays..."

Castle couldn't help the flutter of hope at her mistake. "It's Friday, Kate. But I'm sure Esposito will give Lanie a ride to the hospital if she needs it."

"Esposito and Lanie are dating..." Kate wasn't entirely asking, but she didn't sound sure of herself.

"Well, they're kind of not-dating dating at the moment. But yes." He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, letting go when the ambulance came to a stop and the paramedics started moving to get Kate out and to the ER.

"Castle?"

"I'll be right outside in the waiting room. You'll be okay."


	4. The Plan

The next several hours were mostly a blur as Kate was wheeled from one room to another to be poked and questioned and examined by doctors and nurses. Castle had been brought in at one point to help determine how big of a hole was left in her memory. Kate spent any downtime between tests trying to piece together what she knew.

Castle was her partner. She could only remember snatches of the 4 years he said they'd been working together, like watching short clips of a movie all out of order. Cups of coffee on her desk, absurd theories about spies or the mafia, a few disconnected images of dead bodies that she didn't have context for but assumed were cases she'd worked. A frightened face on the other end of a rifle pointed at her. Faces that she knew were Lanie and Esposito and Ryan and Captain Montgomery. Castle went still and silent when she mentioned Montgomery, though she didn't know why.

She had to fight the instinct to hide how confused she felt. Logically, she knew she needed to let the doctors see what her condition was, but it was hard. It was harder when Castle was in the room because he looked like a kicked puppy when she revealed how little she could remember of their work together. The questions the doctors asked didn't help her figure out who he was, focusing almost entirely on verifiable questions about how long she'd been a detective, who her coworkers were, her current lack of boyfriend. She started to draw some conclusions about Castle's feelings towards her when she noticed the poorly-hidden smile when she remembered that she's single at the moment.

Kate's latest quiet musings were interrupted when a red-headed teenager tentatively stuck her head in the door.

"Alexis!" The girl relaxed and grinned at Kate's immediate recognition. She came over and gave Kate a careful hug.

"Hi. I didn't know if you'd recognize me. Dad said you hit your head pretty hard."

"Yeah. I lost a couple of years at first. I'm getting it back in bits and pieces. The doctors say they're going to keep me here overnight for observation," Kate paused as her doctor came in, looking straight at him as she continued, "And I'll be able to go home tomorrow."

"Probably," her doctor answered her non-question. "But I'll likely want you to stay with someone for another day at least. You lost consciousness, stopped breathing, and as much as you try to hide it, I can tell that you've still got several large holes in your memory."

"You stopped breathing?" Alexis's eyes were huge as Castle entered the room. "Dad, you didn't tell me Kate stopped breathing!"

"Only for a moment," Kate snagged Alexis's hand and pulled her into another hug. "I just got the wind knocked out of me when I fell. I'm fine, I promise."

Kate looked up over Alexis's shoulder and caught Castle surreptitiously wiping the corner of his eye. Alexis let go and stepped back, trying to regain her composure. Kate's doctor glanced down at something in her chart and then back up at Castle.

"It says on Miss Beckett's admission paperwork that you're her emergency contact?"

"It's Detective Beckett." Castle glanced over at Kate. "And I just wrote myself in because I didn't have your dad's number. He doesn't know you're here."

Kate closed her eyes and sighed, then looked back up at Castle. "I'll call him and tell him myself."

"Well, Detective Beckett," her doctor continued, "Do you have someone who could stay with you tomorrow night? Provided everything looks okay tomorrow afternoon, you still might feel weak or have trouble concentrating for awhile. I strongly suggest you plan on taking it easy, and write things down until you no longer notice yourself forgetting little things like what needs to be on the shopping list."

"Kate can stay with us, can't she, Dad?"

Kate was surprised to see a shadow of discomfort flicker over Castle's face before he smiled at his daughter.

"Of course Kate will stay with us. Comfortable guest room, entertaining company to keep her from pushing herself before she should. It's a good plan."

"Do I get any say in this plan?"

Alexis turned to Kate with a raised eyebrow and glint in her eye.

"No. You're coming home with us. End of story. I'll go tell Gram."


	5. Clues

Castle watched Kate watching Alexis walk away. Kate's doctor excused himself shortly after, promising the nurse would be in to move Kate to a room for the night. The silence stretched uncomfortably. Castle shifted on his feet and looked at the door.

"Could you stay for awhile?" Kate was staring at her lap, hands loosely wrapped around the thin hospital blanket.

"Of course." Castle pulled a chair closer to her bed and started fidgeting with the pen and pad of paper from the nearby table. "What should we talk about? I could tell you about Mother's latest escapades with-"

"Who are we?" Castle looked up at Kate with a deer-in-the-headlights expression, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. "I mean, who are we to each other? It's been bugging me. My memory is like Swiss cheese, nothing's in the right order and I can tell I'm missing important things. You haven't left my side since I fell. Your kid is practically kidnapping me to your place tomorrow. We're more than partners, aren't we?"

"That's complicated."

"I remember what I felt like when you kissed me." Kate's whispered comment stopped Castle's nervous fidgeting as he stared at her.

"What do you remember?"

"I felt hopeful. Happy. And at the same time, I remember being terrified, but I can't figure out why. It doesn't feel like the fear was related to the kiss." Kate stole a glance up at Castle through her eyelashes, face still safely tilted down.

"It wasn't a real kiss." Kate's head snapped up.

"What? Yes, it was. I very clearly remember that it was a real kiss."

Castle sighed and set the pen and paper back on the table.

"No, Kate. It wasn't. We were trying to sneak up to a building and we needed the guard to think we were a happy, drunk, non-threatening couple as we walked closer to him. But he wasn't buying our drunken stagger, so I kissed you to sell the role. You broke the kiss when you decked the guy."

Kate was silent for a minute, trying to figure out why she felt like crying as she returned to staring down at her hands. She wanted to ask another question, to ask about the memory of his voice saying that he loved her, but she was afraid to breathe around the lump in her throat. She knew that if she tried, a sob might escape.

The heart monitor's beep increased pace while Kate struggled to hide her emotions. Castle's eyes flicked up to it for a moment before he reached over and captured the hands she was staring at.

"Kate... I don't know what to say to make it better. Believe me, I wish I did. You and I have never been romantically involved, though I think there were a couple of times when we came close to starting. All of this will make more sense as more of your memories come back. You just need to give yourself some time."

Kate continued to sit silently, concentrating on breathing and feeling his palms on the backs of her hands. He started to sit back and she flipped her hands over to keep him from pulling away.

"Kate."

She said nothing, clinging to his hands and trying to breathe normally as the heart monitor beeped quietly, announcing to everyone in the room that she wasn't as calm as she was trying to be.

"Just... Don't leave." Her voice broke and she stopped speaking one word early, but she repeated it in her head like a mantra. _Don't leave me._

"Okay, I'll stay." Castle tugged one hand free so he could lower the bed railing and scoot his chair all the way up to the bed. Kate rolled carefully onto her side facing him, still refusing to look up at him. She closed her eyes for a moment and sighed.

"I'm so tired..."

Castle squeezed her hand and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

"That's okay. Take a nap. I'll wake you if you need to be awake later."


	6. Night

Castle ran his hand through his hair before rubbing at his exhausted eyes. Alexis and his mother had snuck in five minutes after Kate nodded off. He'd sent them away with Kate's apartment keys and a request for a couple of toothbrushes and changes of clothes for both of them. His mother gave him a knowing look when he said he'd be staying at the hospital overnight.

After the nurse moved them to a room, Kate did wake up long enough to reassure Lanie, Ryan and Esposito that she was going to be fine. Esposito warned her that Captain Gates had a mountain of paperwork for her to fill out for a job-related injury. Kate grimaced in mock pain and made a joke about the insurance paperwork being worse than being shot. Castle assumed from her lack of confusion at the name that Kate remembered who Gates was and probably why Montgomery wasn't in charge anymore.

She didn't let go of his hand the entire time her friends were in the room. Castle saw Lanie step on Esposito's foot when it looked like he was going to ask about it. Castle just tightened his grip and softly stroked the back of Kate's hand with his thumb. Eventually, Kate started yawning and everyone took their leave before she nodded off again a few minutes later.

Castle stole an unobserved moment to stroke her hair, thinking about his promise to himself to stop loving the woman holding his hand, and his unreasonably wise mother's belief that it wasn't possible to turn emotions off at will.


	7. Homecoming

Kate stopped just inside the door to Castle's apartment, setting her bags down and taking a good look around. Castle bustled in behind her, closing the door, offering to take her jacket, and generally failing to hide his nerves.

"Does it look familiar?" Kate had no difficulty hearing the anxious hope that Castle tried to hide.

"Very. I stayed here after my apartment blew up. I've had dinner here several times. Martha put on a play in your living room?" Castle couldn't help but return Kate's grin.

"Yes, my mother is-"

"Beautiful, generous, and unbelievably talented?" Martha waltzed into the room with an intentionally humorous flounce that almost managed to pull a giggle from Kate before she squashed it. She'd had little enough dignity at the hospital for the past 24 hours, she felt like trying to pretend she was an adult and not a giddy little girl. But it was hard. Her memories had been returning in fits and starts at the hospital, and returning in no particular order of time nor importance. Standing in a room that felt familiar and filled with happy memories was enough to leave her slightly light-headed with joy.

"Kate!" Alexis kept herself to a walk down the stairs, yet still managed to make Kate imagine what kind of whirlwind 5-year-old Alexis must have been. Kate gladly returned Alexis's hug, taking a breath and trying to memorize the moment.

"Come on, Kate," Castle picked up the bag Kate had dropped. "You must be exhausted. Let's get you up to the guest room."


	8. Exhaustion

Castle closed the door to Kate's room and stood in the hallway for a moment with his eyes closed. He'd hardly slept last night and Kate hadn't fared much better. The nurses had come in every few hours to wake Kate, asking her what her name was and if she knew where she was or what was going on. Kate managed to answer them politely even though she was clearly cranky about being woken. Castle kept himself from feeling grumpy about it by remembering the moment when Kate had stopped breathing and reminding himself of how necessary an inconvenience the questions were.

But now Kate was tucked in bed in his guest room, safe and surrounded by people who loved her. The last little bit of adrenaline trickled away. Castle put his hand on the wall as he swayed with sudden exhaustion.

"Go to bed, dear." Castle hadn't heard his mother come up behind him. "You've had a rough couple of days. You both have. I'll wake both of you for dinner."

"I have to wake Kate in an hour... She's got medication..." Castle tried to hide how tired he was, but the slurring of his words gave him away.

"I'll do it. Go sleep. You'll be more useful to her when you're rested." Martha took him by the elbow and steered him toward his room. She patted his cheek with a small smile before turning and pulling the door shut behind her.

Castle stared at his bed for a moment before kicking off his shoes and collapsing onto it. He tugged a blanket over himself without bothering to get undressed and closed his eyes. He drifted uneasily off to sleep, remembering the look on her face when he said the kiss hadn't been real.


	9. Rhythm

The days quickly settled into a rhythm that Kate both loved and hated. She woke up sometime in the mid-morning, ate a small breakfast in the kitchen while Castle chattered to her about whatever crazy idea he'd just had for his book, then watched TV or read a book for awhile before falling back asleep until lunch time. She'd wake, eat, hang out with Castle, and then go back to sleep unless he was driving her to one of her appointments. She woke up in the evenings before Lanie, Esposito or Ryan came over to chat and check up on her. She also tried to make sure she was awake when Alexis was going to be home. Listening to the teenager chatter happily about her internships, plans for the future, and thoughts on life was more relaxing than Kate would have expected. On good days, Kate managed to be awake for most of the day with only short naps when she got exhausted.

On bad days, Kate had to remind herself that she'd gotten off lightly. The doctors had told her about all the possible symptoms she might need to live with for months or even a year, and she had almost none of them. But that was cold comfort when the headaches got bad enough that all she wanted to do was sleep to get away from the pain, or when her emotions felt so raw that the littlest thing could make her start sobbing. She didn't like how much it reminded her of the first couple of weeks at her father's cabin after her shooting, when she'd had almost no emotional control and worried sometimes that she was permanently broken.

It was hard not to snap at Castle on those days. He had a tendency to hover when she least wanted him around. She did her best not to bite his head off and she hid when she felt one of her crying spells about to start so she could be overly-emotional in privacy.

Two weeks after her fall, Kate felt the start of another bad day. She had a moment of dizziness in the kitchen and dropped a glass. Castle came running in from his office to make sure she was okay. Without asking or stopping when she objected, Castle lifted her off the ground and carried her safely away from the glass so she wouldn't step on anything with her bare feet. She hit him on the shoulder and accused him of being an overbearing mother hen at what was nearly the top of her lungs. Then she doubled over as the headache started and he carried her up to her room while she cried from the pain, the humiliation of feeling like an invalid, and shame that she'd lost control of both the yelling and the tears. He set her on the bed and turned to leave. She caught his hand to stop him. She couldn't speak through the tears but she didn't want him to walk away before she apologized. He settled onto the bed and wrapped his arms around her, rocking her gently and humming.

By the time she stopped crying half an hour later, she was exhausted and the headache wasn't any better. She'd ended up leaning against the backboard next to Castle, head on his chest and arms around his waist. She moved to sit up slowly, but Castle tightened his grip and held her where she was. She relaxed back into him, taking a shuddering breath and letting it out as a sigh. She could feel the rumble of a suppressed laugh and she looked up at Castle suspiciously.

"What's so funny?" Kate wanted to be irritated with him, but his eyes were full of joy and less than a foot away from hers. He opened his mouth to reply and Kate found herself kissing him. He stiffened in shock and she broke the kiss, trying to pull away as she felt her face heat. "Sorry, I don't-"

His mouth was on hers before she finished the apology. She let him pull her back onto the bed, his hands in her hair and her arms looping themselves around his neck. A sudden stab of pain in her temple reminded her that her doctors did not want her exerting herself or doing anything that would raise her blood pressure. She broke the kiss, but only pulled back far enough to look Castle in the eyes.

"I'm supposed to be resting. As nice as this is, it doesn't feel restful."

Castle kissed her briefly on the nose as he stood, leaving her sitting up on the bed.

"I'll be downstairs. Holler if you need anything."

He was out the door and down the hall almost before Kate could blink.


	10. Change

Castle didn't slow down until he got to the bottom of the stairs. He leaned his head against the wall and berated himself for being an idiot. He couldn't decide if the stupid action had been kissing Kate or running away, but he felt certain he'd just made some kind of huge mistake. His instinct was to sprint back upstairs to declare his undying love with flowers, chocolate and a stringed quartet, but he knew Kate well enough to know that even if he had any of those things handy, she didn't want grand romantic gestures. The little ones meant much more to her. Castle couldn't think of any little gestures that he could use today, but he was determined to keep their boundaries where Kate had just moved them to.

He started by cleaning up the rest of the shattered glass. Then he killed time while thinking up and rejecting plans, slowly cleaning all of the parts of the apartment that hadn't gotten attention while he'd been so focused on Kate. He had just started dusting the bookshelf in his office when he realized Kate was leaning against the door, watching him with a contented smile.

"Hey, you're up. And looking much happier with life." Castle set down the duster and walked over to her, stopping a step closer than he previously would've but carefully not reaching out to touch her. She stood up straight, which brought them slightly closer still.

"I'm moving back to my apartment tonight."

Her words cut through his happy mood like a storm cloud covering the sun.

"Why?" He tried to keep the bitter disappointment out of his voice in case he was misreading the situation, but he couldn't resist taking half a step backwards. Kate stepped towards him as she snagged his hand and put it against her cheek. Castle felt the pressure on his chest loosen as he started breathing again.

"Because I need to regain my independence before anything more happens between us. You love me too much to let me struggle and I love you too much to make you make me work for it."

Castle couldn't find any words for a long moment, so he settled for stroking her cheek with the hand she was holding. He swallowed and opened his mouth several times, but the strange mix of hope and despair wouldn't resolve itself into a question. Kate stepped closer until she had Castle backed against the wall, stopping so close he could feel her breath on his neck.

"I want to be very clear about this. I am not rejecting you. I am not running away and I am not hiding. I am moving back to my apartment because if I don't, I'd probably be in your bed by the end of the week and I don't want to ruin our shot by moving too fast."

Castle felt his brain short-circuit at the image of Kate in his bed. His mouth dropped open as his eyes misted over. Kate laughed and kissed his cheek.

"I'm going to go pack my things. I called Lanie to pick me up after work." Castle woke up as Kate turned to walk away.

"I can give you a ride."

"I'll bet you can." Castle didn't think he'd ever seen anything hotter than Kate Beckett leering at him with a grin. "But in the interest of taking things at a sane speed, I'm going to avoid being alone in my apartment with you. I'll call you tonight to let you know I'm okay."

Castle couldn't help but notice the way she sauntered proudly off, victor in this minor skirmish. Her swagger had her hips moving in a way that convinced Castle that he needed to go take a cold shower. Now.

He abandoned the dusting as a lost cause.


	11. Epilogue

Epilogue – Much Later

Kate stopped just inside the door to Castle's apartment, setting her bags down and taking a good look around. Castle bustled in behind her, closing the door, offering to take her jacket, and generally failing to hide his nerves.

Castle's apartment. Now their apartment.

"So, Mrs. Castle," he grinned at her disapprovingly raised eyebrow. "Welcome home."

Kate couldn't help but smile at his obvious joy.

"I thought I'd finally pounded it into your skull with the marriage certificate that I'm going to stay Beckett. I've lived with the name too long to be happy changing my identity."

Castle feigned an injured expression. "But what will we call the children? Castle-Beckett? Beckett-Castle? Those names are too big a mouthful for little mouths."

"We still have nine months to argue over it." Kate couldn't restrain the laughter at the utter shock on Castle's face.

"Nine months? But how- I mean, what- Are you saying you're-?"

Kate rescued him by stopping his mouth with a kiss. She had most of his shirt unbuttoned before she let him come up for air.

"Not yet, darling," she teased him by drawling the word with a fake southern accent. "But I suggest we start working on the project immediately."

Kate was not headed for the guest room as she hauled a stunned Richard Castle away from the door.


End file.
